#SaveLICH: NY1 On Today’s SUNY Hearing, McCall Says Condos Possible

Urgent care centers are for NON emergencies and cannot replace a hospital. At the hearing McCall made specifically said he wanted to make it very clear to all present that real estate is not the Board’s consideration and they had no plans to build condos. Intereesting since the Brooklyn Paper reported months ago that their own testimony in court papers revealed that real estate certainly was a consideration. Also interesting is that before he made this proclamation to the audience, he was interviewed by Magee Hickey who says he told her they that they are considering proposals for condominiums. So who did he lie to? Magee Hickey or the audience?

At the hearing, after doctors, nurses, patients and community members testified, MC Call stood up & said he doesn’t know where anyone got that idea from about condos because the real estate was never considered & they have no plans to build to condos, but as you can see, he admitted to the reporter that they are considering a condo proposal. What else have they lied about? As if we don’t already know…

that’s exactly what its all about. McCall admitted it to the TV reporter outside, then came in & denied it to everyone in the room.

WHICH ONE IS TELLING THE TRUTH?

SUNY Chairman Carl McCall: “There isn’t much they [SUNY-Downstate] can do right now because of the court case”

LICH Nurse Julie Semente: “Open the doors, let the patients back in, stop blocking the doctors from coming in, let LICH provide the services that we are prepared to provide. We are fully staffed. We have our services open, but they
are not allowing any patients into them.”

NOT A TOUGH DECISION – Carl McCall is caught in another lie!

His fearmongering threat of raising SUNY tuition is designed to hide the truth that Julie Semente tells us. SUNY has manufactured this crisis at LICH, and just as SUNY, by its own admission, has “taken steps to reduce patient census as well as outpatient volume,” SUNY could “take steps” to stem its millions
in monthly losses by allowing patients to be admitted to and treated at LICH and restoring LICH income stream.

In fact, however,ct, the reckless actions at LICH of SUNY-Downstate President Willliams and SUNY Chairman McCall are part of a gamble, with SUNY and taxpayers’ money and with Brooklyn residents’ healthcare, that SUNY will recoup its financial losses and much more by closing LICH and “monetizing” LICH assets, i.e., by selling LICH property, as Mr. McCall admitted to Magee Hickey, “for condos.”

But closing LICH violates the terms under which SUNY acquired LICH for no cash, just two and a half years ago, in a transaction that required NYS AG Charities Bureau and NYS Supreme Court approvals’ Those approvals were conditioned upon SUNY’s agreement to continue LICH’s “charitable mission” as a full-service, acute care hospital. (SUNY also assumed liability to
repay LICH’s $140 million endowment.) In multiple documents at the time, including its successful application for a $40 million NYS HEAL grant, SUNY claimed it wanted to “acquire LICH to become a single hospital with two (2) campuses in Brooklyn.” Now, given SUNY’s stated goal of closing LICH, the court is questioning whether SUNY has in fact forfeited the legal right to ownership of LICH.

For months now, SUNY has tried to paste over the truth of its illegal closure and land grab at LICH with “shocking” sound bites, like those here — “1400 in staff for 12 patients” “losing $13 million a month” “tuition increases at all campuses” — without, of course, telling us that SUNY itself created and perpetuates this crisis and could easily end it. After all these months, Chairman McCall should be aware that the public is not so easily fooled. Hopefully, neither are the SUNY Trustees.

Meanwhile Park Slope is protesting the extension of Methodist Hospital in their neighborhood and we’re protesting the closing of LICH in our neighborhood.

How about issuing a SWAP?

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/optioninvestor/07/swaps.asp

Funny thing is LICH docs are ranked among the best in the nation every year by US News & World Report Best Hospitals eval. At least 5 LICH specialties are ranked as top high performance. LICH is consistently ranked in the top 25 health facilities in NYC, ranked among the top 30 in the entire state & is one of only 2 Brooklyn hospitals that made the cut for best in the borough. LICH doesn’t have carpets on floors & fancy artwork on walls or sterling silverware on the meal trays but it had the best of what mattered. Nobody had to leave Brooklyn for best care.